Tag Archives: #FreedomOfReligion

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A very liberal UCC bishop wants to throw out major parts of the Bible Can anyone really be surprised?

One of the basic, underlying themes of Christianity, across all of the various denominations, is that the Bible is the word of God, given to authors who were divinely inspired by the Lord to bring his word to us mere, fallible mortals. Some Christians — former President Joe Biden, a (supposedly) devout and dedicated Catholic who nevertheless approves of prenatal infanticide, homosexuality, same-sex ‘marriage,’ transgenderism, racial discrimination, and government spying on the Catholics he doesn’t like being the most obvious example — like to ignore the parts of the Bible that they do not like, and some, but almost all accept the premise that the Bible is the Lord’s instructions to mankind.

Note that I wrote “almost all,” because that leaves room for Yvette Flunder, “the senior pastor of the City of Refuge United Church of Christ (UCC) in Oakland, California, as well as the Presiding Bishop of The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries,” who apparently does not accept that premise. Many parts of the Bible need to be thrown out, superseded by a third Testament, because she just plain doesn’t like what the first two Testaments say! Continue reading →

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The seriousness of the surge in Catholic conversions

As a somewhat frequent participant in Catholic discussions on Twitter — I still refuse to call it 𝕏, the dumbest rebranding of the 21st century — I’ve been seeing a ton of posts about the surge in Catholic converts. Apparently, the algorithms see what we like, and send more of the same our way!  Many tweets about people’s individual conversions cheered me, but the one by Chrissie Mayr, screen captured at the right, seemed far more important to me. Miss Mayr pointed out what not everyone knows: unlike our Protestant brethren, who basically welcome everyone into their churches as members as soon as they walk in the door, conversion to Catholicism is a process, one which involves serious time and education into the beliefs held and requirements of becoming Catholic.

Miss Mayr told us that she initially found the process of OCIA, Order of Christian Initiation of Adults, intimidating, and it certainly can be.  OCIA is not meant to be intimidating, but I suppose I can see where some might see it that way. But it is intended to show aspiring Catholics what being Catholic really means, and to what they planned to commit. We want aspiring Catholics to understand the sacrament of Reconciliation — confession and absolution — and the need for an examination of conscience. We want aspiring Catholics to understand the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, and Apostolic Succession. We want aspiring Catholics to understand the real reverence of the Eucharist, the heart of every Mass. We want aspiring Catholics to not only be proud of being Catholic, but to understand why they should be proud of it.

I’m old enough to remember the surge of “Jesus freaks” of the late 1960s and early 1970s. They were, essentially, non-denominational Protestants, and the passion and fad of such soon faded. The recent surge in conversion to Catholicism entails as orderliness that the Jesus freaks never had, and we hope that OCIA brings that orderliness and with it, a more durable commitment.

OCIA is a process which has the catechumens coming to Mass every Sunday, not only for the Mass, but for their instruction. This is a subtle, or perhaps not-so-subtle means of instilling in them the habit of getting out of bed on Sunday morning and coming to church. One thing too infrequently acknowledged is that attendance at church is a habit, and the more often you do get up rather than sleeping in, the easier it is to get up the next Sunday. For me, especially during colder weather, there are some Sundays that it’s really hard to get out of our nice, warm, comfortable bed, but it’s a habit, and I do it anyway. On both Palm Sunday, when the bedroom was cool due to the window being open, and Easter, when it was just plain cold, our bed was just so very nice, but yes, I got up anyway, and went to Mass. There’s a point at which you are more encouraged to get up and go to Mass because you want to keep your attendance record spotless.

Will the recent surge in Catholic conversions hold? Will our Church see more Catholics staying Catholic, more Catholics in the pews every Sunday morning? Only the Lord knows the answer to that, but I believe we have reason to hope.

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The rise of anti-Semitism by recent Catholic converts

It has been said that Catholic converts are among the most zealous of all. And so it is with Carrie Prejean Boller, or, as I prefer to call her, Carrie Prejean Hez-Boller, because she has been extremely vocal in her support of the ‘Palestinians’ and their war against Israel.

On March 23, she tweeted:

Israel is a terrorist state committing an absolute death camp in Gaza, and Lebanon. This evil regime must be called out. Zionists want you to think these are “God’s chosen people” causing mass murder of innocent life, all while justifying it.

Absolute blasphemy!

These are God’s enemies.

This is the woman who lost her crown as Miss California over a leaked masturbation tape of herself she sent to her then-boyfriend when she was 17 — something which was technically dissemination of child pornography — and now she is whining that she lost a seat on a ‘religious liberty commission’ due to her continual anti-Semitic remarks.

How, I have to ask, can she be entrusted with any position on ‘religious liberty’ when she calls the Jews of Israel “God’s enemies”?

Now she’s trying to pick a fight with two Catholic bishops, Timothy Cardinal Dolan and Robert Barron which led Richard Hanania to tweet, “This woman seems to think the Catholic Church is some kind of global Walmart where you can just keep demanding to see the manager and yell at him for not being antisemitic enough.” 🙂

It turns out that I am not the only one to notice this:

The Catholic Convert Boom Is Real But A Troubling Pattern Is Emerging

Some new Catholic voices are using the faith for something else entirely.

By Ryan Girdusky • Tuesday, March 24, 2026 • DailyWire.com

As we approach the holiest day of the year for the Catholic Church, tens of millions will prepare to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of Americans across the country are preparing to join the faith I have belonged to since birth.

Converts to the faith have played a crucial role over the last two millennia, from St. Paul’s journey to Damascus, to St. Augustine’s departure from a life of debauchery that would make Hugh Hefner blush, to G.K. Chesterton, whose writings still speak to millions nearly a century later, to St. Elizabeth Seton, the first American-born saint.

I firmly believe the Catholic Church is the greatest civil institution ever created. Since its founding, the Church has clothed the naked, educated the young, fed the hungry, tended to the sick, and through divine mercy provided the path to salvation for billions of people.

During the darkest times in human history, the Catholic Church was the only institution that separated the West from barbarism. The very fabric of Western civilization is tied to the history of the Church.

This is absolutely true! Catholicism spurred Western civilization, but Catholicism specifically, and Christianity in general, are dependent upon Western civilization for survival. Christianity is fractured these days, and has been since the rise in Protestantism. Religious tolerance did not come easily with the Reformation, with King Henry VIII persecuting Catholics, and his successor and elder daughter, Queen Mary I, turning right around and persecuting Protestants. Queen Elizabeth I was famously Protestant, but while she was no friend of the Catholics, she didn’t take working against Catholicism to nearly the extent of her father. Tolerance for various Christian denominations grew, albeit slowly. As part of the restoration of the monarchy, King Charles II promised religious tolerance, meant to be between Anglicans and Presbyterians, but it was a policy that included Catholics.

While it’s easy for me to wax poetic about a church I have repeatedly fallen in love with over the years — even with all of its shortcomings — other high-profile converts appear to be using their newfound membership in the Catholic faith as nothing more than a political prop.

It is true, the vast majority of new converts join for all the right reasons. But a small, vocal cadre of political influencers are using their Catholicism to build social media platforms, feigning purity as an E-girl or, even worse, promoting antisemitism. It is people doing the latter who pose the most credible threat to the integrity of all Catholics and create a widespread erroneous belief that Catholicism has an issue with Jews.

More specifically, people like Mrs Boller and Candace Owens Farmer, someone initially conservative and sensible, who then fell into anti-Semitism, and then went full bananas into conspiracy theories — I wonder if she’s fallen into 9/11 Trutherism yet? — are convinced that the Jooooos run the world

Mira Fox wrote:

“As a Catholic, I don’t agree that the new, modern state of Israel has any biblical prophecy meaning at all,” (Mrs Boller) said in the hearing. Later, she doubled down on X. “I’m a proud Catholic. I, in no way will be forced to embrace Zionism as a fulfillment of biblical prophesy,” she wrote.

What she was referring to was the idea of Christian Zionism — the theological belief among some Christians that the Bible supports the existence of the modern state of Israel. Some forms of Christian Zionism support the Jewish state as a necessary, prophesied precursor to Jesus’ return; all Jews must return to Israel before the end of days. Others may simply support Israel because they believe it shares their “Judeo-Christian” biblical foundations. But whatever the reasons, there has historically been widespread political support for Israel among American Christians. And that support has been core to Israel’s relationship with the U.S.

Zionism.

Theodor Herzl was a Hungarian Jewish journalist and lawyer who was the father of modern political Zionism, with his book Der Judenstaat. Herzl formed the Zionist Organization and promoted Jewish immigration to Palestine, which, in the late 19th century was part of the Ottoman Empire, in an effort to form a Jewish state.

Zionism exists because we good Christians forced it on the Jews.

While European Jews might have supported Theodor Herzl’s ideas, few of them actually chose to emigrate to the Holy Land. The ending phrase of the traditional Passover seder, “next year in Jerusalem,” expressed a hope, but it wasn’t one that the Jewish diaspora in Europe took seriously enough to make aliyah — emigrate to Israel — themselves. But then the good Christians in Germany voted for Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. Even before the outbreak of war in Europe, those same good Germans went along with the despoilation of the Jews. Little by little, their property was confiscated, their businesses driven out, their jobs taken away.

After the war in Europe started, and the Third Reich overran much of Europe, our good Christian ancestors of just two generations ago willingly helped the Nazis find those Jews who were in hiding, in Germany and the occupied countries, helping to load them in the boxcars and be shipped off to a (supposedly) unknown but nevertheless dreaded fate.

Remember: Cuba, the United States, and Canada all denied entry to the MS St Louis, a ship with over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis in 1939, just before the war began. The surviving Jews in 1945 could count on no more help from the Western Hemisphere than they could from Europe. Many private colleges in the United States imposed Jewish quotas, because ‘too many’ Jews were winning admissions without them.

After the war ended, the surviving Jews chose to make aliyah because there was no place else for them to go! Their homes and property were destroyed and gone, and their surviving old neighbors were frequently the same people who identified them to the Gestapo. The good Christians of Europe had proven to the Jews, once again, that they could not count on their Christian neighbors to help and protect them; the Jews could count only on themselves.

Then, as they tried to make their way to the Holy Land, the British, who were siding with the Arabs because the Arabs had oil, put many of them in ‘displaced persons’ camps, and tried their best to keep the surviving Jews out of the Holy land.

What other conclusion can be drawn? The surviving Jews could count on no one but themselves, and that turned Theodor Herzl’s Zionist dreams into hard-nosed reality. We good Christians created the Zionism of the post-war years, and which continues today!

Like so many other people, now 81 years after World War II, I’ve always found it difficult to understand how the Nazis were able to get so many good and decent Europeans to go along with their round-up of the Jews. I could see how people submitted at the point of a gun, but there were so many Europeans who helped voluntarily, under no compulsion other than their own decisions.

But now? Now I can see it, I can understand it. We have good Americans, citizens of this country, which was a major contributor to winning World War II against both Germany and Japan in part by bombing them back to the Stone Age, whining about Israel’s destruction in Gaza while never mentioning that Hamas and their supporters in Gaza started the war.

I can also understand how some people, including a lot of sensible conservatives, didn’t like or want the United States bombing attack against Iran. I didn’t like it either, though I am certainly happy that the Islamist leadership have mostly been sent to their 72 bacha bazi boys. I want to see us out of that war as soon as possible, and wouldn’t support any ground troops being used there for anything other than the purpose of seizing all of Iran’s fissile material and destroying all of their nuclear armament equipment.

But this ridiculous anti-Semitism, this hatred of Jews and Israel, our easternmost outpost of Western civilization, and our bulwark against the hordes of seventh-century Islamist barbarism, is the ultimate in stupidity. We can argue about the wisdom of the American involvement in attacking Iran, but the notion that we’re somehow controlled by the Jooooos and puppets of Israel is ridiculous and ignorant and just plain stupid.

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The utter idiocy of anti-Semitism Anti-Semitism has no place among real Catholics

Carrie Prejean Boller is a very attractive young lady with a very ugly soul. She claims to be a Roman Catholic, but I have to ask: is her Bible just one of those small New Testaments that the Gideons leave in hotel nightstands? Does she cover her ears during the first reading on Sunday Mass, which is normally from the Old Testament, the ancient Jewish scriptures? Does she sit there stone-faced during the responsorial psalm, the works primarily of David, King of Israel and Judah? What does she do when most American Catholic parishes sing Oh come, oh, come, Emmanuel at the beginning of Advent?

She even depicted herself as St Joan of Arc, though, amusingly enough, she had images of Jesus and Mary, who were both Jews, in the background.

I don’t know how often she attends Mass, but she at least tweeted support when the late Charlie Kirk talked about his family going to Mass every week.

But there she is, ranting about “Zionists” and “Zios”, and supporting the Palestinians who, if they actually achieved the Islamist government they want, would put her into chattel sex slavery to a much older Muslim man, assuming that they didn’t just slit her throat.

Christianity does not exist without Judaism! The majority of our Bible are the ancient Jewish scriptures, which give us the laws of God and the prophesies of the Messiah being sent to us, foretold by Jewish prophets. Jesus himself was Jewish, born into a Jewish family, and teaching in synagogues. If Miss Boller take communion, receives the Body and Blood of Jesus in the Eucharist, she is imitating Jesus and the Apostles as they gathered together for a Passover meal!

There is, however, more than just religion involved in this. Israel is our easternmost bastion of Western civilization, of freedom, democracy, religious tolerance, and free enterprise. Miss Boller can rage and rant about the Jooooos all she wants on Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — because she enjoys the freedom of speech and of the press that the West provides. It’s not just those freedoms, but the existence of technology almost entirely developed in the West, including in Israel, that gives her the means to express her opinions beyond her physical circle of friends. From the first printing press, to the development of radio, and then television, and that internet thingy that Al Gore invented, she is benefitting from the technology developed in the West. Biz Stone, one of the four creators of Twitter, which she uses to attack Jews, is himself Jewish.

If she uses a cellular phone, she is using technology that was in significant part developed in Israel. If she has been vaccinated for polio, she has been kept safe by one of the two vaccines, both of which were developed by Jews.

Anti-Semitism has no place in the developed world, because so much of what has made us the modern world was developed by people of Jewish heritage. And anti-Semitism has no place in the Catholicism she claims.

The Israel she hates so much? I have been, all too briefly, to Jerusalem, I have gone to Mass in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, I have been to the Mount of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane, I have walked the Via Dolorosa, all things important to Catholics, and all things protected and preserved by Israel.

The Muslims she champions? ISIS destroyed ancient relics in Syria and Iraq, because they considered them idolatrous, while the Taliban of Afghanistan destroyed several ancient sites and a library, for the same reasons. If the Islamists won in the Holy Land, if they drove the Jews into the sea, there is no particular reason to believe that they would be any less destructive of Christian sites.

But I just saw where she called Candace Owens brave, simply more proof that she hates the Jooooos.

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A kerfuffle over Altar Girls

My Twitter — I refuse to call it 𝕏 — feed today has been filled with complaints because His Holiness Pope Leo XIV held Mass yesterday at a diocesan church in Rome with, Heaven forfend! altar girls as well as altar boys. Some of the complaints were trivial, that the altar server on the left was wearing tennis shoes, but most were that girls should not be allowed to serve at or near the altar, or anywhere in the chancel or sanctuary.

From Wikipedia:

During the Second Vatican Council. The Church discussed whether lay women could be servers at mass, although the matter would ultimately remain unchanged. Later in 1980 the Catholic Church would reaffirm the 1917 Code of Canon Law which stated: “A woman is not to be the server at Mass except when a man is unavailable and for a just reason and provided that she give the responses from a distance and in no way approach the altar.”

In 1994, Pope John Paul II changed canon law, removing the church wide ban on allowing women and girls to serve as altar servers. The decision was devolved to Bishops, who could choose whether to allow or disallow girls to serve as altar servers, but overall removed the Church wide ban.

Full disclosure: when we were parishioners at St Joseph’s Catholic Church in Hampton, Virginia, in the 1990s, both of our daughters were altar servers. They were also in parochial school for part of that time.

As we moved around for my career, we have been members at St Mary of the Assumption in Hockessin, Delaware, and, from 2002 through 2017, St Joseph’s Church in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania. Though my daughters did not serve there, there were altar girls as well as altar boys.

St Elizabeth’s Catholic Church, where I attend Mass. Photo by D R Pico.

Now we are members at St Elizabeth of Hungary Catholic Church in Ravenna, Kentucky. St Elizabeth’s is a very small parish, with only 24 families as parishioners. We have been extremely fortunate in that we have three new, serious catechumens this year, and this is where the service of girls as altar servers has become most important. Following the shutdown of the churches due to the COVID-19 panicdemic — not a typographical error, but spelled to reflect exactly how I saw it — we lost our previous altar kids, who left the parish and never returned, and were it not for one single girl, we’d have had exactly zero altar servers for two entire years.

Since then, we have added two more altar servers: her younger brother and even younger sister. All of our altar kids come from one devout family.

How devout? The father serves as a Eucharistic Minister, meaning he offers the chalice of sacramental wine for parishioners, and the mother serves as a lector, or the person who reads the first two readings of the Mass[1]Every normal Sunday Mass has a reading from, usually, the Old Testament, followed by a Responsorial Psalm, and then a second reading, normally one of the New Testament epistles or from Acts of the … Continue reading and the Responsorial Psalm.

The numbers are pretty simple: in our small parish, we have two male lectors, myself being one of them, and two male Eucharistic ministers, though a third was added just last Sunday. The others are ladies, and they do just as fine a job as anyone else.

With the kids having been at St Mark’s in Richmond while the two younger altar kids go through their Confirmation classes, adult men in our parish, usually me, though one of the Eucharistic ministers also takes a turn, have been the altar kids.

Some kid: I’m 72¾ years old!

Perhaps some larger parishes have a sufficient number of men and boys who volunteer for these positions, and actually I was kind of voluntold, but let me be blunt about things: without the ladies, we would not have the staff we need.

The Church has this problem all across the world: a shortage of men taking the positions they once held. And part of this is something that our separated brethren — our word for Protestant Christians — suffer as well: too many men, too many fathers, not coming to church. At St Elizabeth’s, it isn’t as noticeable, but we are too small to be statistically significant. Too many fathers staying at home on Sunday, letting the mother bring the kids to church. This sends a message to boys growing up: church isn’t all that important to men, and don’t think the boys don’t get that message. To my friends who don’t believe that girls should serve in the chancel, my message is simple: get more boys, more men, to serve at Mass. Otherwise don’t complain about a problem you aren’t helping to solve.

References

References
↑1 Every normal Sunday Mass has a reading from, usually, the Old Testament, followed by a Responsorial Psalm, and then a second reading, normally one of the New Testament epistles or from Acts of the Apostles. Following that comes the reading from one of the four Gospels, by the priest, prior to his homily.
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How to Win Friends and Influence People Don Lemon never read that book!

In 1936, Dale Carnegie published his famous self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. This is clearly a book that Don Lemon, a television journolist[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading best known for being a host on CNN from 2014 until 2023 never read. He had been plagued by allegations of misogyny, something made more credible due to his homosexuality, and was eventually fired because CNN was having other trouble with him.

Well, here he goes again:

Don Lemon And Rabid Anti-ICE Loons Invade Minneapolis Church Service

by Nina Bookout | Sunday, January 18, 2026

The anti-ICE protestors are getting worse by the minute. Today, the rabid shrieking harpies and loons decided it was totally fine to invade church services in Minneapolis.

Anti-ICE protest disrupted a Sunday church service in Minneapolis after a group of activists entered a congregation and forced worship to stop, according to footage shared online.

The incident occurred at Cities Church, a Southern Baptist Convention congregation, where protesters stormed into the sanctuary chanting anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement slogans. The group alleged that one of the church’s lead pastors was affiliated with ICE, a claim the protesters repeated while interrupting the service.

So, without any genuine facts in evidence, these rabid loons decided one of the pastors is with ICE and thought it was totally fine to invade a church service and disrupt the proceedings. This as other anti-ICE goons have been stalking people for driving the wrong kind of vehicle (yes, really), or dressing the wrong way thus making it ok to be accosted while having lunch.

Conveniently, Don Lemon, former CNN hack, was prancing alongside these asshats.

There’s more at the original.

I have no idea whether one of the ministers at Cities Church supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or is “affiliated” with ICE. Although Hennepin County went strongly for then-Vice President Kamala Harris Emhoff, 502,710 (69.80%) to 197,244 (27.39%) for then former and now current President Donald Trump, he still had some support. Statewide, Mrs Emhoff carried the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but not by a ridiculous margin. There are clearly some people in the state who support President Trump’s immigration enforcement policies.

The congregation at Cities Church? Well, who knows, but the Southern Baptist Convention tends to be politically conservative, moreso than some other Protestant denominations. But I would imagine that Dale Carnegie would be shaking his head at the demonstration and incursion that Mr Lemon led as not being a very effective way of persuading the worshipers they interrupted and bothered. I would guess that, if anything, the protesters both strengthened the resolve of the good congregants who support the detention and deportation of the illegals, and caused those who don’t want to see the illegals deported to see the boorishness of those on their side.

The Golden Age Times tweeted:

Disgraced ex-CNN host Don Lemon & anti-ICE Leftists STORM into a Minneapolis church, shouting anti-ICE slogans.

“This is the beginning of what’s going to happen here.”

“You have to make people uncomfortable.”

I can’t speak for others, but I wouldn’t feel ‘uncomfortable,’ I’d just be pissed off. This is just another version of idiotic climate cultists trying to destroy art or blocking major roads, making people late for wherever they were headed.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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A Catholic parish commits a crime Church policies on immigration do not supersede American law

That the Roman Catholic Church, of which I am a proud member, supports far less restrictive transnational immigration is well known, and His Holiness Pope Leo XIV has been pushing hard on the subject. Thus, the following article comes as no surprise to me:

UPDATE: ICE deported Minnesota church employee, surveilled parish during Mass, mayor says

ICE’s presence outside the church impedes parishioners’ free exercise of religion, said the pastor of St. Gabriel Catholic Church in Hopkins, Minnesota.

By Kathleen Murphy · DC Bureau · Friday, January 9, 2026 · 3:01 PM EST

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents surveilled St. Gabriel the Archangel Catholic Church in Hopkins, Minnesota, on Epiphany after deporting the parish’s beloved maintenance worker to Mexico five weeks earlier.

The Trump administration last year eliminated a federal policy that generally prohibited immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations” such as schools, churches, and hospitals. Attendance at St. Gabriel’s Spanish Mass has dropped by half since the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception, and parishioners have expressed fear of churchgoing about eight miles from where an ICE agent shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good on Jan. 7.

Father Paul Haverstock, pastor of St. Gabriel’s, said he had vested for the 1 p.m. Spanish Mass Jan. 4 when a parishioner told him about men wearing ski masks in a car outside the church. He said he was disturbed to receive the report, went to the sacristy to get his cellphone, and placed it next to his chair in the sanctuary.

“If there is an incident of agents coming in, I want to make sure that it’s recorded, and I want a clear recording of me letting the agents know that we’re in the middle of a religious service,” Haverstock said.

Two of the hyperlinks in the quoted story above were not in the original, but researched and added by me.

It has to be asked: why were Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents outside the church?

Church employee Francisco Paredes, 46, who had lived in the U.S. for 25 years with one conviction for driving under the influence, was handcuffed by ICE Dec. 4, 2025. Eight federal vehicles pulled into a large parking lot adjacent to St. Gabriel’s on 13th Avenue South after Paredes picked up coffee on his way to work, Paredes said, and he was driven to a processing facility. . . .

Until Paredes’ arrest and before ICE parked outside St. Gabriel’s, more than 400 people had usually attended the Spanish Mass, Haverstock said. Haverstock said he is considering offering a temporary Sunday Mass dispensation in his parish for those who are afraid.

So, St Gabriel’s holds well-attended Masses in Spanish, and the church previously employed an illegal immigrant; the article stated, in its mealy-mouthed way, that Mr Paredes “lacked legal permission to live in the U.S.” It is reasonable to suspect that significant numbers of illegal immigrants live in the area and attend those Masses.

Father Haverstock stated that Mr Paredes was a great employee, fully bilingual, and a tremendous help around the parish. That’s fine, but then there’s this:

Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, requirements come out of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). IRCA prohibits employers from hiring and employing an individual for employment in the U.S. knowing that the individual is not authorized with respect to such employment. Employers also are prohibited from continuing to employ an individual knowing that he or she is unauthorized for employment. This law also prohibits employers from hiring any individual, including a U.S. citizen, for employment in the U.S. without verifying his or her identity and employment authorization on Form I-9.

The IRCA was passed in 1986, which was 40 years ago; Mr Paredes has been in the United States for a stated 25 years, which means that he was hired by the parish church well after the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 became law.

Under the Handbook for Employers M-274, Section 11.8, it is specified that:

Unlawful Employment Criminal Penalties
Engaging in a Pattern or Practice of Knowingly Hiring or Continuing to Employ Unauthorized Aliens

If you or your business are convicted of having engaged in a pattern or practice of knowingly hiring unauthorized aliens (or continuing to employ aliens knowing they are or have become unauthorized to work in the United States) after Nov. 6, 1986, you may face fines and/or six months imprisonment.

Engaging in Fraud or False Statements, or Otherwise Misusing Visas, Immigration Permits, and Identity Documents

You may be fined and/or imprisoned for up to five years if you:

  • Make a false statement or attestation to satisfy the employment eligibility verification requirements;
  • Use fraudulent identification or employment authorization documents; or
  • Use documents that were lawfully issued to another person.

Other federal criminal statutes may provide higher penalties in certain fraud cases.

For Mr Paredes to have been employed by St Gabriel’s, at least one of these things had to have happened:

  • The parish hired Mr Paredes without a reasonable effort at verifying the documents provided; or
  • The parish hired Mr Paredes without checking his documents at all or filling out Form I-9; or
  • Mr Paredes presented false or fraudulent documents good enough to have passed a reasonable inspection by Pastor.

All of these are crimes!

The article provided by EWTN News does not tell us how long Mr Paredes was an employee of St Gabriel’s. The parish staff page tells us that Fr Haverstock first became Parish Administrator in 2020, and assigned as Pastor on Independence Day of 2021, so, if Mr Paredes was hired before those dates, Fr Haverstock could not have been the person who hired him. However, if he became aware that his employee was an illegal immigrant after he became Administrator, but before Mr Paredes was detained, yet continued to employ Mr Paredes, he would be in violation of the law. Fr Haverstock would not be required to report the illegal immigrant’s presence in the United States, but he would have had to discharge him.

There are no exemptions for churches or church employees under our immigration laws. Church policy, even coming from the Pope himself, does not supersede American law.

Perhaps article author Kathleen Murphy did not realize it when she wrote, but she published the report of a crime. And while this is the documentation of one crime in one parish, who would be surprised if this hasn’t happened widely throughout the thousands of parishes and hundreds of dioceses in the United States?

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(Purported) canon lawyer is very upset that infants can be baptized without their consent

Sunday, January 11, 2026, is in the calendar of the Catholic Church, the celebration of the Baptism of the Lord, our remembrance of when Jesus chose to be baptized by his cousin, St John the Baptist. Today’s Gospel reading was from Matthew 3:13-17:

3:13 Then Jesus arrived from Galilee at the Jordan, coming to John to be baptized by him.
14 But John tried to prevent Him, saying, “I have the need to be baptized by You, and yet You are coming to me?”
15 But Jesus, answering, said to him, “Allow it at this time; for in this way it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he *allowed Him.
16 After He was baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water; and behold, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending as a dove and settling on Him,
17 and behold, a voice from the heavens said, “This is My beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”

Hardly an offensive passage, but naturally that was the day The Irish Times chose to print an essay from Dr Mary McAleese, who claims to be an “academic civil and canon lawyer, (and the) author of Children’s Rights and Obligations in Canon Law: the Christening Contract (Brill 2019),” to claim that the Catholic practice of infant baptism is evil, evil, evil!
n

Baptism denies babies their human rights

Rite & Reason: No one is Catholic by birth and the notion of ‘Baptismal promises’ is risible

by Dr Mary McAleese | Sunday, January 11, 2026

Throughout the world, there continues a long-standing, systemic and overlooked severe restriction on children’s rights with regard to religion. This warrants, but has yet to receive, serious examination. It impacts Ireland in a special way and contemporary circumstances make Ireland an ideal place to conduct that examination.

Let me set the scene with a couple of brief, inter-related stories. They concern the relationship between children’s rights and religion in Ireland, and certain unchallenged aspects of the canon law of Ireland’s major Christian denomination and provider of education, the Latin Catholic Church.

It restricts children’s rights as set out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 and United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) in 1989, to which both Ireland and the Holy See – which governs the Catholic Church and is effectively the author of canon law – are State Parties.

Good heavens! Baptism “restricts children’s rights”? Which rights? It certainly does not prevent those baptized as Catholic from joining most Protestant churches, nor does it somehow drag reluctant people to Mass on Sundays. More, the Catholic Church accepts most baptisms conducted by Protestant churches as valid. Muslims do not accept baptism as valid for anything, because they have no equivalent ritual. Jews have ritual cleansing, the Tevilah, but it is not the same under Judaism as baptism is for Christians.

Atheists? Buddhists? Whateverists? Being baptized as a Catholic does not prohibit anyone from joining another religion, or deciding that they have no faith at all.

If you are a Christian, baptism means a great deal to you; if you are not Christian, baptism means nothing to you, and as either a sprinkling or an immersion in water, it has done you no harm.

The distinguished Dr McAleese is very concerned that baptism means you are irreversibly a Catholic according to canon law, and that’s true enough, but my response is: so what? The Church cannot force you to go to Mass, and cannot force you to believe anything. The Church has no gendarmerie which can arrest you if you walk into a Pentecostalist or Baptist church on Sunday, nor the authority to show up at your door on a wintry Sunday morning in which you chose to stay under the covers.

Attempts to leave the Church or change religion or challenge Church teaching or magisterial authority, constitute canonical crimes of heresy, apostasy, schism. Among the punishments attached to such acts is the much-misunderstood penalty of excommunication, which in fact leaves membership intact but subject to restrictions.

It should be obvious that, if someone does wish to change religion, to not be a Catholic any longer, the penalty of excommunication is meaningless. It means, in effect, that you can’t go to church in the church where you didn’t want to go.

I suppose that for “an academic civil and canon lawyer,” that might be of overwhelming concern, but out in the real world, it’s pretty much meaningless.

There are many things that parents can command as they rear their children, from going to church to eating their hated peas for supper, a mortal sin in my mind.

There’s more at Dr McAleese’s original, but really, it’s silliness. Baptism, and membership in the Catholic Church is voluntary, even if the Church already has someone listed in its rolls.

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“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.” ― William F. Buckley

I will admit it: there was a strong feeling of amusement among sensible people when the simpleton from Sweden was arrested for protesting in support of the British pro-terrorism group. Greta Thunberg had made a name for herself as a climate kook, but has branched out in support of Hamas, Palestinian terrorism, and against Western civilization defending ourselves from the forces of barbarism, even though it is Western civilization itself which gave her the luxury to protest against anything rather than having to spend her time and energy scratching the dirt in hopes of feeding herself and the three or so kids she’d have popped out by now in a subsistence lifestyle.

But there is a more important point which needs to be made: our British forebears and other European ancestors have been criminalizing the freedom of speech which we take for granted.

Amy Coney Barrett Issues Free Speech Warning

Wednesday, December 24, 2025 | 9:41 AM EST

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett has warned about threats to free speech in the United Kingdom.

Coney made the remarks during an interview with Bishop Robert Barron for an episode of his podcast, Bishop Barron Presents, which was released on Sunday.

“Think about what’s happening with respect to free speech rights in the U.K.,” Barrett said during a discussion about the purpose of law. “Contrary opinions or opinions that are not in the mainstream are not being tolerated, and they’re even being criminalized. Because of the First Amendment, that can’t happen here.”

It can’t? it wasn’t until Associate Justice Ruth Ginsberg went to her eternal reward and Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed that the Supreme Court took freedom of religion into account when it came to the restrictions that states put on churches to fight the COVID-19 panicdemic.[1]No, that’s not a typographical error; panicdemic was exactly how I intended to spell it, because panic is exactly how governments reacted.

It was under the Administration of President Joe Biden that an FBI “Analyst” submitted a proposal to monitor traditional Catholics who prefer the Tridentine, or Traditional Latin, Mass, “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics,” or RTEs, he called them, because “Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists,” or RMVEs might be interested in using Latin Mass Catholics to spread their goals.

Someone leaked a hand-redacted, redacted by magic marker, copy of the “FBI internal use only” document, and the Bureau decided, rather quickly, that they ought to withdraw the document entirely.

FBI retracts leaked document orchestrating investigation of Catholics

By Tyler Arnold and Joe Bukuras | Thursday, February 9, 2023 | 3:15 PM EST

The FBI says it is retracting a leaked document published on the internet Feb. 8 that appears to reveal that the bureau’s Richmond division launched an investigation into “radical traditionalist” Catholics and their possible ties to “the far-right white nationalist movement.”

In response to an inquiry from CNA, the FBI said it will remove the document because “it does not meet our exacting standards.”

Really? The document is ‘sourced’ citing far-left political sources, including Salon, The Atlantic, and the Southern Poverty Law Center. If there are less biased sources, they were redacted from the document. It’s so bad that it makes me wonder: if it was a great departure from the Bureau’s “exacting standards,” why wouldn’t the document author have realized it, and the Bureau have flagged it before it was leaked? Or is the document not really that great a departure from those “exacting standards,” which calls into question just how “exacting” those standards really are.

Can we tell the truth here? The document was retracted because it was leaked, and the FBI were embarrassed. But without our First Amendment, not only would a government investigation of “radical traditionalist Catholics” be perfectly legal and not questionable at all, but the fact that the “FBI internal use only” document was leaked and published could have been illegal.

Barrett’s comments come as Britain has faced increased scrutiny over its policing of speech, including from Vice President JD Vance, in recent months.

Some critics have focused on the Online Safety Act, rolled out this year, which requires social media companies to remove illegal content on their platforms. Critics say is being implemented too broadly and has resulted in the censorship of legal content.

Even with our First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and of the press, our good friends on the left have waxed apoplectic over the freedoms which allow non-liberal, non-leftist news and opinions to be disseminated, as Michael Tomasky, editor of the New Republic blamed those freedoms for Kamala Harris Emhoff’s defeat, even as his own magazine was using those very same freedoms to publish.

The New York Times has published articles claiming that Free Speech is killing us. Noxious language online is causing real-world violence, and that Twitter’s bans on ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering’ actually promotes freedom of speech. The Times told us how wonderful it was that Jeff Bezos was able to deplatform Parler, but lamented that some of those who lost their speech on Parler migrated to Gab and Rumble.

The left were predictably aghast when Mr Musk did buy Twitter and imposed a much broader freedom of speech regime. When it comes to the American left, and how the Biden Administration tried to create a Ministry of Truth Disinformation Governance Board under the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security, and that very liberal hater of free speech, Nina Jankowicz.

One thing has been made clear: our First — and Second! — Amendment rights have been under attack even here, not by sensible conservatives, but by the left. Under President Biden, himself (purportedly) a Catholic, we’ve seen attacks on the freedom of speech, of the press, of religion, and peaceable assembly, because the left absotively, posilutely hate that their great truths can be challenged.

Thus, while we can chuckle at the fact that a crackpot was arrested for demonstrating in support of the pro-Palestinian British hunger strikers — most of whom have given up their hunger strike anyway — we need to remember that the threats to our freedoms come from the left, and the Biden Administration proved that the plain words of the Constitution mean nothing more than an inconvenient impediment to their goals and them, not a absolute block. We need to support Miss Thunberg’s freedom of speech and peaceable association not because we agree with her, but because we strongly disagree, because that is how we defend ourselves.

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↑1 No, that’s not a typographical error; panicdemic was exactly how I intended to spell it, because panic is exactly how governments reacted.